Blindsided by Financial Crisis, and Trying to Rebuild

Struggling to balance motherhood and work, Ms. Calder decided to make a change. Confident she would be able to find similar work closer to home, she left her job of four years in 2008. She was blindsided when the bottom fell out of the economy….With no other options, Ms. Calder said, she and Orion entered New York City’s shelter system….In May, she turned to the City Bar Justice Center’s Legal Clinic for the Homeless, an affiliate of the Children’s Aid Society, one of the seven agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, and received $200 from the fund to buy clothes.